Leonard Cohen and I - Almost

 

 

 

Leonard Cohen and I almost knew each other. Our lives touched briefly several times, twice only in print.

 

I discovered many years later, after he'd long become famous, that as students we had shared the front page of the McGill Daily. My mother had saved the paper and I discovered it after she died. The headline was 'Literary Contest Winners 1954: First Place Poetry, Leonard Cohen for 'The Sparrows;' First Place Fiction, A.R. Coleman, for 'The Secret Place.' Of course, as everyone in the world knows, he went on to fame and fortune as a writer, and later, singer. For my part, I was snatched up and whirled along by life - children, teaching, marriages. Then at long last I returned to writing and published a book ('I'll Tell You a Secret,' 2004. I seem to favour telling secrets). When the French edition came out in 2007, (titled 'Sept etes de ma jeunesse') a favourable review appeared in a French paper and there, on the same page as my name, was Leonard's, whose latest book was also being reviewed.  A funny coincidence only I would recognize. Those were our connections on the page, as it were.

 

I also had a number of real-life occasions in Leonard's company. He was a friend of my best friend Judy, long ago in Montreal and North Hatley, Quebec. Whenever Leonard came home from Greece or wherever he'd been, Judy gave a party for him. Or he'd just come over to North Hatley from Ways Mills where he had a house. Thus we were often together in the same group though we never connected intimately. But one evening we almost did.

 

It was the summer of 1965. We were on the verandah of Judy's lakeside cottage, the only light a few candles, the dark water below us. I was wearing a very short little shift dress I loved. It was cream coloured with pale green flowers. We were all beautiful in those days, girls, (we thought of ourselves as girls not women, in those pre-feminist days), and slim and brown with summer sun, with long floating hair. I was talking to whoever was my love of the moment. Leonard was across a little way talking to someone else. I saw him suddenly glance across, then hold my eyes with his. He gave me a deep and speaking stare and then he stepped across to me. He placed his hand on my stomach. I could feel its warmth through the thin silk of the dress. He left it there for a moment and then stroked me tenderly. I was taller than he and I remember looking down at his intense, slightly smiling face. Then he stepped away and we both went back to our conversations. For some reason I've always remembered that moment. An almost moment.

 

Today it would be interpreted as sexual harassment perhaps. It wasn't. It was a fleeting tender connection. Something could have happened but did not. A path opened that neither of us was able to go down just then.